Graffiti World
by Platinum Dragoness
Summary: A young girl begins a mystic quest in the postapocalyptic world.
1. Graffiti Trails

Title: Graffiti Trails  
**Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.**  
Theme: Ami--Graffiti  
Version: Anime

The graffiti, to one who could follow its meaning, presented a clear trail, but the guards told her just how right she was.

"Eh, eh," she said, raising her hands and submitting to a search every few ruins.

"Who's tats?"

"Far ward."

"Gang 'in't ally."

"'In't blood-feud eter."

She covered up the tattoos covering her arms, something she never would have done if she hadn't been so far away that the gangs she had known as being in the far north were so far south no one here had heard of them. "Wanna see boss," she insisted each time she was stopped.

They let her through eventually. She didn't have any weapons on her, her tattoos weren't from a rival ward that they knew of.

The graffiti trail grew more elaborate as she went forward. The main color was blue, but there were roses and other pictures she'd never seen before. It smelled more and more like water and less like the tang of radiation she had never noticed before because it so permeated the shattered world.

The ward boss treated with such reverence by its inhabitants was the oldest woman she'd ever seen, white-haired and heavily wrinkled. If there was a chance for her quest succeeding, this was it.

A gutter rat wouldn't have known how to act around a ward boss, other than to scamper away when kicked, but her gang had taught her well after she'd joined and she'd do them proud. One hand on her heart and one on her temple, she bowed as properly as she knew.

"You've come from very far away. Why do you want to see me so much?"

The woman's voice was smooth and rich, like deep-running water, with too many syllables.

"'Eard boss from b'fore."

"Before the nuclear disaster? Yes. Yes, I was."  
"'Possed ta tell…" she screwed up her eyes to remember the exact sound of the message she was supposed to deliver. "'The Senshi reawaken. This is Bunny-of-the-Moon. Send along on her mystic quest your successor to Mercury.'" She opened her eyes and smiled proudly at having recited her message perfectly, even if all she understood of it was that her name, Bunny, was in it.

Old Ami-of-the-Waters studied the strawberry-blonde girl of the post-apocalyptic world, with no idea of the "mystic quest" she was on. "My princess."


	2. Tear Trails

Title: Tear Trails  
**Disclaimer: Still don't own Sailor Moon. I do own the Apocalypse, just in case there was any question there.**  
Theme: Ami--Teardrop  
Genre: Drama  
Version: Anime  
Rating: PG 

She couldn't say she had been expecting the visit, but she wasn't surprised in the slightest. Ami wondered briefly how Usagi had managed to deliver a message to who Ami presumed was her great-granddaughter. But she had. And of course she had the successor she was asked to provide, as though she could miss a girl with a sailor crystal in her heart.

Ami signed her guards. "Get my guest food." She turned back to the girl. "Gift," she said to be sure she'd understand. "I must get."

Rose was painting, as usual. Mizuko was too. They were making a huge blue bird today, which looked to Ami like a Chinese imperial phoenix. "Girls."

"Yes, Ami?" Rose asked, looking up. Mizuko continued as though she hadn't heard.

"Mizuko."

Mizuko looked up at her name, blinking owlishly.

"It's not that I'm displeased with you, but it's time for you to go away for a while."

"Why?" Rose wailed.

"I've told you you were Sailor Mercury and Sailor Neptune. Now it's time for you to find out what that means." Ami discovered she was crying to see them go.


	3. Would Follow

Title: Would Follow  
Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.  
Theme: OC--Hide and Seek

The old lady boss had given her these two, not as some kind of slaves, but as traveling companions to help her do what the pretty lady, Se-re-ni-ty, wanted her to.

Bunny eyed them carefully. Rose was as articulate as the old woman had been. There was definitely a hierarchy of speaking, but if one could do it well enough, fighting was much more important. Mizuko was one of the silent ones.

Bunny whistled a war chant of her gang, making her nostalgic for her distant homeland, and watched the other two girl's willingness to follow her with no explanation to the rubble-strewn badlands.

"Mir! Here girl, Mir! Where ya? Mir!"

Bunny sat down at the snorting sound; otherwise she would have been barreled over and as it was she ended up on her back.

"'Ey, Mir."

Mir was a feral through and through. Bunny eventually pushed off the girl licking her enthusiastically, and grabbed the bag of her weapons she had tied on her to rearm herself.

"Need go to white mount breathin' fire."

"Mt. Fuji?"

Bunny shrugged. "Come, Mir." She assumed the others would.


	4. Shake the Concrete

The fourth part at last, hopefully following the tradition of lots of vivid description (I wish) and short snippets of incomprehensible dialogue.

Title: Shake the Concrete  
Disclaimer: Still don't own Sailor Moon  
Theme: OC--Milestone

Rose was all chitter-chitter like a bird and Bunny didn't get half of what she said. Mir had the right idea, making bird calls amid her growls to try to imitate her. Mizuko didn't even make sound like Mir did but every feral was different. As long as she was trained enough to mind Rose as well as Mir did her, Bunny didn't care.

Near useless, though. Rose used a lot of words Bunny didn't understand and after she'd decided they were going north so not to this Mt. Fuji, she stopped trying to listen. The part of her that remembered how close she'd come to going feral before joining her gang and getting educated their way made her want to learn Rose and that old lady boss's way of speaking. Eh, if she could hardly understand it than neither could anyone else.

Bunny sniffed the air and then scampered up and almost vertical broken slab of concrete to study the exact color of the clouds. "Be aci'clow alright, but int gonna be dropin on us."

"What?"

Rose was so strange, able to understand her words more often than the other way around but then not getting them, like she'd never heard of the concepts before. Just like she could read little dabs of lines and swirls in paint but was practically illiterate in graffiti and tattoos. She'd thought the girls had been the old lady's gang's taggers but evidentially they'd just painted things because they were pretty and not understood what they'd meant and now she was just plum confused.

Bunny shook her head sharply to clear it, bits of strawberry-blonde hair getting in her eyes. About time to cut it again; unlike at home she didn't have the luxury of tying it back. "Mir."

Her answering howl was long and low. She nodded. "S'what I thunked."

"Are we stopping for the night? Are those clouds going to bring the acid rains?"

"Not stop." She was fairly certain Rose had the opposite of what she'd meant. "Aci'clow, ya. Brin here, no."

"The rains are going to miss us?"

"Ya, figrin."

"So we're going to keep going?"

"Ya ya."

"Mizuko might not be up to it but we'll try."

Whatever her words said, Bunny heard from her voice that she was the tired one. She shrugged. She couldn't expect them to keep up with her. She was older, a gang thug in good health and shape, had been traveling huge distances already. On the other hand, they could go further than they thought they could and she'd stop and find shelter if they really couldn't.

"Be near there. Rest then." Mostly she just wanted to get there to not test her theory about the rain.

There was little gang territory out this way. The walls pitted from the acid had hardly a friendly map for travelers every mile or so, no stakes of claim and warning. She wouldn't have been surprised by a gang on the mountain itself but all the symbols she could puzzle out said mild danger, more so at the summit, from fire, earthquake, and angry ghosts.

Out this far most of the land had been wilderness before the bombs had fallen. Most of use had already been scavenged off the cities anyway. Mir caught small animals and sometimes Mizuko with the quickness of a feral. Between Bunny and Mir they kept any larger predators off, even jungle cats and spit snakes and hunting plants. Bunny knew well enough what could be eaten in the forest and what not, and to her surprise Rose knew northern plants some, better than she did.

Eventually even the concrete skin of the road petered off. Bunny had an animal's sense of direction: the sun rose on the right and set in the left and not being able to see it didn't get in her way to know which way her destination was. Maps were all well and good but knowing in her bones was all she really needed.

The mountain finally came into view, gray and dirty of the sort that Bunny called white and might have been back in the days when snow wasn't filthy before it reached the ground. It was cold with a strong wind keeping the rain off but it wasn't much as she reckoned it. No one would freeze to death if they kept moving, so automatically not that severe. Rose and Mizuko were dressed well enough by the gang that outfitted them and Mir in everything she'd been able to get her to keep on. She herself wore the least of any of them to show off her tattoos but a gangster was supposed to be tough, that was the point.

The going wasn't as hard as she'd feared it would be. The paths had been well traveled at some point in the past and were now overgrown but not broken the way things in cities were. The slope was a pain but it was hilly country everywhere so her muscles were used to it enough.

The earthquakes started further up, little tremors of warning that they really didn't want to go all the way up to the top. Bunny knew earthquakes as well as anyone and had never seen anything like it. Not natural. Ghosts. She was superstitious enough but they bright lady had said here so it must be worth it.

She was just considering ordering the others to stay behind when the ash and fire began falling from the sky. She started in the primal fear of someone who had grown up on the stories of the bombs from old-timers.

"I can handle this," Rose said unexpectedly. "Neptune Power Makeup!"

Bunny looked at the girl with a new respect. She didn't know much about witches but she was one and was sure the old lady had been too. It sounded like what the bright lady had taught Bunny to say, so her and Mir and Mizuko were witches too by her reckoning.

Rose's magic keeping the fire off showed two figures in the murk. Bunny had out her lasgun and a knife in an instant, though she moved her fingers to signal Mir not to charge in.

There was more water now. The storm clouds were suddenly closer, as well as she could tell through the smoke and ash. Fire too, and the world jerking and swaying like walking on a rusty beam about to give out.

Bunny gestured stronger to Mir to grab Mizuko by the teeth and go away both of them. She herself stood strong as she could while trying to see what Rose and the other two were doing to each other. They certainly were paying her all the mind, and dressed like her, maybe…

It couldn't hurt and might help. She recited exactly the syllables she'd been taught. "Moon Power Makeup!"

She didn't really understand how magic worked other than through here, but it said it wanted shields and it got them. Invisible if shimmery.

They did make visibility better too. They were dressed like her and Rose, just in a red skirt and purple bows and a dark blue skirt and yellow bows. A lot of them were covered but she could see enough of their tattoos to know gangsters, even if she could only read a bit of them.

If Serenity had sent her Mir and to Ami to pick up Rose and Mizuko besides, she'd probably meant her to collect these two too. If she'd had a gang with her they'd probably had only have used violence and intimidation, but that wasn't very practical for her. Oh well, she wasn't stupid to only think like a low-ranking gangster.

"Eh eh there. We be looknin far ye. Wanna talk." They were listening to her at least. "Sent by Se-re-ni-ty. 'Kay? Tis ere be Rose-of-the-Sea en I be Bunny-of-the-Moon."


End file.
